In the 10-part documentary film, Basketball: A Love Story, director Dan Klores tells the story of the game in 62 short films ranging from pieces on the very beginning of the sport all the way through the modern era. It includes segments on college ball, the ABA, international play, and women’s basketball, as well as the NBA.
This is no A-B chronology, nor is it a history lesson. Instead, Klores made the decision to present his film in a non-linear style with the realization that the evolution of the game is the connective tissue that holds it all together. Before we get to James Naismith, we have Latrell Sprewell choking out P.J. Carlesimo.
It’s the smaller stories that hold particular resonance. From Immaculata College’s amazing Mighty Macs who established women’s basketball as a force just as Title IX came into existence, to the bizarro world of the ABA, these are just a few of the fascinating tales that Klores brings to life.
The film airs in five segments on ESPN beginning Tuesday. (Portions of this interview have been lightly edited for length and clarity.)
SB Nation: This feels like an amazing collection of folk stories.
Dan Klores: You got it right there. Short stories, that’s exactly right. Folk stories. You’re the first one to get it like that.
I’m curious about your decision to present non-chronologically.
DK: I’ll be very truthful. From the very get-go, that’s five years ago. And by the way, it takes me two years to do a 90-minute film. This is 20 hours in four and a half years, right? From the get-go, I had no intention of doing this chronologically. No intention of doing this in a mini-biographical way.
I was not going to do: Here’s six minutes on Michael Jordan, five on (Gregg) Popovich and six on the 69 Knicks. None of that bullshit. That’s been done before in many longform docs. No way I wanted to do that.
There’s an evolutionary flow to this game that connects these stories.
DK: It does connect. There’s a chronology often, but I break it up with signature move scenes, or Joy versus Relief, or the Genius Gene. I don’t want to tell the same old, same old angles. On Kentucky versus Texas Western, I was much more interested in what that victory meant to the black household in 1966. I was much more interested in what that victory meant for the recruitment of black athletes below the Mason-Dixon line. That’s where that goes.
On one-and-done, I mean, give me a break, how many times can we hear the one-and-done argument? So that’s my entrée to Spencer Haywood. One-and-done, the contemporary discussion, the genesis, is not Kobe Bryant leaving high school, who made it. Or Bill Willoughby leaving high school, who didn’t make it. The genesis is Spencer Haywood. So that’s the way I told it.
(Editor’s note: Haywood was the first player to turn pro before his college class graduated when he joined the ABA.)
That’s the connective tissue. This is not a history of basketball because you’d need 80 hours. This is a series of 62 short stories, folk stories, and they do connect. And there are transitions. I wasn’t going to open this film with Naismith. I would have turned it off if I opened with Naismith.
So I open with: The Love of the Game. Then I go to this 6-minute scene about teachers and coaches and very logically transition into a Kenny Smith comment, ‘Yeah it all changed.’ The coach as the teacher to be respected, the priest, the parental figure. Guys started cursing out coaches, talking back to them, one guy even choked his coach. Boom PJ-and-Sprewell. Now, I can cut to Naismith. There is that historical perspective of course, but it all relates.
The simplicity of the game has never changed. Here’s the ball and here’s the fucking basket. How am I going to figure out to score, how am I going to figure out how to stop you. Everything else is the beauty of the game. The arc of the mind.
There’s this wonderful scene in one of the Moves section where Allen Iverson is talking about the crossover. He says, ‘There’s the crossover. It’s one move, but within the crossover there’s like multiple variations.’
DK: Those signature move scenes, I discovered that I wanted to do it pretty early in the process. It marries generations. Wes Unseld on the outlet pass. Do you know what Kevin Love’s middle name is?
It’s Wesley.
DK: That’s right. Why? His father was a teammate of Unseld. It’s not an accident that Kevin Love throws the outlet pass. Those signature move scenes gave me the opportunity to use young and old. I got the younger guys in there, LeBron going rim to rim, Durant off the double team, Chris Paul on the steal, Dirk Nowitzki on the one-leg step-back. And then, I don’t use Stockton and Malone on the pick-and-roll, but I use Oscar (Robertson) and Wayne Embry. They were the pick-and-roll.
It’s just beautiful when Oscar talks about there’s four moves he had to make, four things he had to see.
I love talking to these guys about basketball. It’s why I’ve been covering this for over a decade now. That’s the fascinating part to me.
DK: What I love, in addition, is talking to coaches about their craft. We get into great shit, man.
The [former Marquette coach and Hall of Famer] Al McGuire part is fantastic.
DK: Thank you. Let me ask you a question. How old are you and what music do you listen to?
I’m 44 years old, and I’ve become a raging Deadhead again for the first time since college.
DK: It’s the images of our youth that stay with us. By the way, I’ve seen the Dead more than 80 times. I think the last one was in Jersey City, the night that Nixon resigned. Outdoors.
...I asked (Bill) Walton, “How many times have you seen the Dead?” He goes, “I don’t know ... six, seven hundred.” [Laughs]
That’s a great transition because there’s a couple of different stories that I want to get into, so let’s do Walton. I love that ‘76 Blazers team, I was two years old, so I have no memory of them, but I read Breaks of the Game a million times.
DK: (Portland coach Jack) Ramsey was my first interview. On purpose. Because I knew how real he was. And he was four hours in his room. He was unbelievable. He died like two months later.
That Finals between Portland and Philly, it was always presented as TEAM versus TALENT. What really comes through in your piece, it was JOY versus TENSE. That Blazer team was so joyful in the way they played. You can win with overwhelming talent, but the teams that stand out over history are the ones that play with joy.
DK: That play together, and buy into their roles, and that’s why there’s only one champion. And, when you veer off, it’s a negative. That’s what Portland was. I love that scene because the raw honesty of people in that scene. Ramsey, on camera, opens up and says, ‘We intended to exploit Dr. J’s defensive weaknesses.’ And then to show it.
Bobby Gross, he was a great role player, but you could see it. Dr. J was not willing to take that extra step, and what is that? That extra step is the difference between who wins a championship and who doesn’t.
The other part of that scene was Dr. J criticizing his own coach, Gene Shue. That’s amazing, but he was right. That’s a major coaching decision. How am I going to have these three guys (Ed note: Erving, George McGinnis, and Doug Collins) that can score on anyone. Whose team is this going to be, and are the other two going to buy into it?
His decision, Gene Shue, it’s going to be the three of their teams, and that didn’t work. It might have got them by if they played someone else, but Ramsey’s team was way too disciplined. Way too together. Way too joyful, as you say.
I am so happy that you did an Immaculata piece. I worked in Philly coming up and the entire history of women’s basketball flows through that school and that area. For people who don’t know about the Mighty Macs, they’re one of the great teams of all time.
DK: I knew a bunch of things starting out. I’m not going to do linear, I’m not going to do mini biographies, I’m not going to do chronologically. And I’m not going to box women into their seven-minute scene, and so I’m going to integrate women throughout the entire piece.
I did not get the real depth of the women as the outsider until the first woman interview. That was with Val Ackerman. When she starts talking, if you close your eyes, your hearing the voices of other outsiders. So then I said, ‘Oh fuck this. Now I’m really going for it.’
There’s six different scenes on women and I remember hearing about Immaculata. I didn’t know that much about it. A woman who’s around the WNBA, she turned me on to Immaculata. And then Ann Meyers said, ‘You can’t do this piece without (Immaculata coach) Cathy Rush.’
The footage of the nuns in hula hoops. And (Rush’s) husband, she’s so excited she’s about to win a national championship, and her husband who’s an NBA ref (Eddie Rush) says, ‘Ok dear. Don’t get too discouraged if you lose.’ That’s not quite the encouragement you want.
I loved the idea that in 1975, that made me cry, they play the college doubleheader in the Garden. First time women are playing prime time in the Garden, and after they win thousands of women come on to the floor in the Garden to shake the hands of the girls who played. That’s a gigantic historical moment.
Which had been lost. I knew a lot about Immaculata, I didn’t know that story.
DK: Neither did I.
The respect that the modern players have with the WNBA players is really fantastic. Ballers have always recognized ballers. I don’t know of another sport that does that.
DK: In women’s basketball they say, “Why are you comparing us to the men? What are you doing?” You have to examine that statement. Are you really doing it so you can continue to put women in your caste system? The answer is probably yes. I mean, are you kidding me? I went to the Olympics in Rio, they (the United States women’s team) were unbelievable.
I’ve got one more for you. The ABA, I have read everything, seen everything on the ABA, I can not believe you got Warren Jabali on camera. The Jabali, John Brisker stuff, I’ve never seen that much John Brisker in action.
DK: I was a big ABA guy. From the beginning, playing in the Island Garden and LaVern Tart.
Jelly Tart!
DK: I was at the Finals, Doctor versus David (Thompson) in Nassau County. I was there. The ABA, just love it.
Everybody talked about Brisker and Jabali. Everybody in the world was scared to death of them. George Gervin says, ‘Hey man, when Jabali comes down the lane, it’s matador time.’ (Laughs)
Everybody was afraid of Brisker except for Idi Amin, apparently.
(Ed note: The rumor that’s discussed in the film is that Brisker became involved with Amin in Uganda and died under mysterious circumstances.)
DK: How about this: So, Tom Nissalke was the coach of the Dallas Chaparalls and Brisker’s beating the shit out of everybody, so he puts out a bounty!
So Len Chappell goes, ‘I’ll do it.’ They throw the ball up, and boom he lays out Brisker. Could you imagine that now?
Everything about the ABA, if you put it through today’s prism, would make no sense.
DK: It’s the greatest! It was (Pacer coach) Slick Leonard with a hockey stick going after one of his own players.
That’s what I love about this film. From here until eternity, we now have these stories preserved. It’s in our collection.
DK: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I’m immensely honored that you feel that way.
Basketball: A Love Story will air on ESPN beginning on Tuesday.